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The Dog-Star Rages

From Battery to Park
by George Pope Morris
c. 1849 · 11 stanzas
Unseal the city fountains, And let the waters flow In coolness from the mountains Unto the plains below. My brain is parched and erring, The pavement hot and dry, And not a breath is stirring Beneath the burning sky.
The belles have all departed— There does not linger one! Of course the mart’s deserted By every mother’s son, Except the street musician And men of lesser note, Whose only earthly mission Seems but to toil and vote!
A woman—blessings on her!— Beneath my window see; She’s singing—what an honor!— Oh! “Woodman, spare that tree!”1 Her “man” the air is killing— His organ’s out of tune— They’re gone, with my last shilling, To Florence’s saloon.2
New York is most compactly Of brick and mortar made— Thermometer exactly One hundred in the shade! A furnace would be safer Than this my letter-room, Where gleams the sun, a wafer, About to seal my doom.
The town looks like an ogre, The country like a bride; Wealth hies to Saratoga, And Worth to Sunny-side.3 While fashion seeks the islands Encircled by the sea, Taste find the Hudson Highlands More beautiful and free.
The omnibuses rumble Along their cobbled way— The “twelve inside” more humble Than he who takes the pay: From morn till midnight stealing, His horses come and go— The only creatures feeling The “luxury of wo!”4
We editors of papers, Who coin our brains for bread By solitary tapers While others doze in bed, Have tasks as sad and lonely, However wrong or right, But with this difference only, The horses rest at night.
From twelve till nearly fifty I’ve toiled and idled not, And, though accounted thrifty, I’m scarcely worth a groat; However, I inherit What few have ever gained— A bright and cheerful spirit That never has complained.
A stillness and a sadness Pervade the City Hall, And speculating madness Has left the street of Wall. The Union Square looks really Both desolate and dark, And that’s the case, or nearly, From Battery to Park.
Had I a yacht, like Miller, That skimmer of the seas— A wheel rigged on a tiller,5 And a fresh gunwale breeze, A crew of friends well chosen, And all a-taunto, I Would sail for regions frozen— I’d rather freeze than fry.
Oh, this confounded weather! (As some one sang or said,) My pen, thought but a feather, Is heavier than lead; At every pore I’m oosing— (I’m “caving in” to-day)— My plumptitude I’m losing, And dripping fast away.
I’m weeping like the willow That droops in leaf and bough— Let Croton’s sparkling billow Flow through the city now; And, as becomes her station, The muse will close her prayer: God save the Corporation! Long live the valiant Mayor!6

Morris’s Original Footnotes

  1. “Woodman, spare that tree!” — Morris’s most famous song (1837), set to music by Henry Russell. By the 1840s it had become a street-singer staple. The joke: Morris is hearing his own hit played badly beneath his window by an out-of-tune organ-grinder.
  2. Florence’s saloon. “A much-frequented restaurant in Broadway.” The organ-grinder and his woman have taken Morris’s last shilling to the saloon.
  3. Sunny-Side. “The country residence of Washington Irving.” Morris pairs “Wealth” fleeing to the Saratoga resort with “Worth” (i.e. literary merit) fleeing to Irving’s cottage on the Hudson — Morris and Irving were both leading American men of letters.
  4. The “luxury of wo.” A pun: the printed word is the omnibus driver’s shouted command to stop — “W-H-O-A!”
  5. A wheel rigged for a tiller. “A peculiarity of Commodore Christopher B. Miller’s yacht, ‘The Ultra.’” An unusual steering arrangement on a famous New York racing yacht.
  6. Long live the valiant Mayor. Morris quotes Mayor Caleb Smith Woodhull, who on the evening of May 10, 1849 — the night of the Astor Place Riot — reportedly said: “If you want me, you will find me — AT THE NEW-YORK HOTEL!” This dates the poem to summer 1849 and mocks the mayor for retreating to a hotel while his city burned.

Historical Context

Written in the summer of 1849, “The Dog-Star Rages” is not a song — unlike Morris’s famous 1842 Croton Ode, this is a satirical poem about New York City suffering through a heat wave, laced with topical references that only 1849 readers would catch. Morris himself was the editor of the Home Journal, and the poem reads almost like a verse op-ed complaining about the weather, the absent elite, the out-of-tune organ-grinder, and the mayor who fled to a hotel during the Astor Place riots.

The poem is dense with inside jokes: Morris quotes his own famous song (“Woodman, Spare That Tree!”) being butchered beneath his window; he pairs “Wealth hies to Saratoga” (the fashionable resort) with “Worth to Sunny-side” (Washington Irving’s country house); and he envies Commodore Miller’s yacht The Ultra, which let its owner escape to “regions frozen.”

But the crucial Croton line comes at the very end: “Let Croton’s sparkling billow / Flow through the city now.” Seven years after the aqueduct opened, Morris doesn’t need to explain what Croton is. The river-name has become shorthand for relief itself — the thing that saves New York from fire, from thirst, from the “burning sky.” In 1842 the Croton was a wonder. By 1849 it was a proverb.

About George Pope Morris (1802–1864)

George Pope Morris was one of the most popular American poets of his era. Co-editor of the New-York Mirror (1823) and later the Home Journal, he wrote the official Croton Ode performed at the Park Fountain on October 14, 1842 (music adapted from Rossini’s Armida by Sidney Pearson), and his song “Woodman, Spare That Tree!” (1837, set by Henry Russell) was among the most widely sung popular songs of the antebellum period. He collaborated with N. P. Willis on the Home Journal until his death.

Morris’s work spans sentimental ballads, patriotic odes, humorous verse, and opera librettos. “The Dog-Star Rages” shows his comic range — a far cry from the grand Rossini-adapted splendor of the Croton Ode, but no less affectionate toward the city he served as an editor for forty years.

The Six Poets of Croton Water Morris — The Croton Ode (Suno Kit) Child — New-York Boy’s Song (Suno Kit) Search “Morris Croton”

Source

Published in Poems by George Pope Morris (1853). Text from Project Gutenberg: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2558. Morris’s original footnotes preserved. Dated c. 1849 based on the Astor Place Riot reference (May 10, 1849).